Posted By Mike On February 28, 2013 @ 12:43 PM In In The News | No Comments

In The News 03-01-2013Your Weekly Update In The World Of Technology

Get Back To The Office!

President and CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer, made some waves and ruffled some feathers within her company last week. So what is causing the unrest? A memo made its way to Yahoo employees last week that stated all employees that work from home, effective in June, would have to come back and work within the office. The memo stated that “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side.”

The move will affect all of Yahoo’s 11,500 employees — even those that work remotely full-time. In fact that seems to be the employees the new policy change is directed at. Many of these employees may not necessarily live anywhere near Yahoo’s offices. This would force them to either relocate or resign.

Besides causing some unrest within the company itself, the decision to bring employees back to the office has brought both praise and criticism from outside of the company. One of the biggest critics of the new policy is Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson, stating “We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they’re at their desk or in their kitchen.” Some, such as Donald Trump, have praised Mayer’s decision, saying she is doing “a good job.”

Happy 100 Million

Instagram, that stronghold of socially-shared, heavily-filtered photos, hit a milestone this week. The company announced on Tuesday that it has officially reached 100 million users. This is impressive, considering Instagram is barely over two years old and was just purchased by Facebook last year for $1 billion.

This milestone is also impressive due to the backlash Instagram received back in December when it announced new terms of service conditions. Many users swore they would quit the service, but the newly announced numbers seem to prove that wasn’t quite the case. Co-founder Kevin Systrom shared a long blog post that included stories of Instagram’s beginning as well as its many uses and highlights during the app’s short life.

Systrom stated that “Instagram, as a tool to inspire and connect, is only as powerful as the community it is made of. For this reason, we feel extremely lucky to have the chance to build this with all of you.”